


Win This Deadly Game (Survive, Live, Thrive, Repeat)

by ShowMeAHero



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Canon Continuation, Established Relationship, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Murder Husbands, Post-Finale, Spoilers for Wrath of the Lamb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 01:55:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4688039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShowMeAHero/pseuds/ShowMeAHero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bedelia has three place settings; she did not make it to the table on her own; the plate set before her does not bear her initials. Will and Hannibal survived the fall, but Bedelia will not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Win This Deadly Game (Survive, Live, Thrive, Repeat)

**Author's Note:**

> Written immediately after seeing the finale. Nothing about Bedelia's scene makes sense if you think she did it herself. How did she get to the table, how did she cook and serve her own leg without any assistance, why are there three places settings, why does the engraving on the plate not have her initials, why isn't she serving herself, why, why, why. It all looks like what Hannibal did to Clarice in the movie "Hannibal". The script said "she waits for her host to return". Really, all signs point to Hannibal and Will having come back for her and are fucking with her before they inevitably kill her.
> 
> And so, this was born.

Bedelia took a shaky breath in, focusing down at her hazy reflection in her dish. Her hand trembled on her oyster fork, sweet and ready to serve her own meat back to her. Will entered quietly, his smart, sharp shoes whispering across the floor, ghosts in their own right. He leaned over Bedelia’s right shoulder, suit jacket brushing the bare skin of her upper arm as he poured wine into her glass for her. He curved his wrist, turning the bottle up and away in a manner that could only have been taught to him by Hannibal.

“We have missed you, Bedelia,” Hannibal’s voice said from the doorway into the kitchen, and the sound of it - the lilt of his accent, the twist of his words - triggered a Pavlovian response in her; she straightened, and refused to meet his eyes. He came to Will’s side, taking the wine bottle out of his hands, trading it for the covered dish in his own. Bedelia watched in silence, then -

“Have you?” she asked, and Hannibal clicked his tongue, scolding her, a clear reprimand.

“Don’t be rude, Bedelia,” Hannibal reminded her. He poured wine for Will, then for himself. Will set the covered dish at the end Hannibal was clearly intending to be seated at. Hannibal set aside the wine and checked one of the candles. He caught a drop of wax on his fingertip. “Of course, we have missed you.”

“We all thought you were dead,” Bedelia replied. Hannibal pulled out the chair settled at the center of the table for Will, and Will accepted the seat, sliding in until he was neatly pressed parallel to the table edge. Hannibal took his own seat.

“And they will all continue to think so,” Hannibal said. He lifted his wine glass and tipped it towards her. Will lifted his for a moment, then took a sip from it. Hannibal’s hand still hovered in the air, fine fingers tight around the stem and the deep bottom of the bowl. Bedelia hesitated, then reached out, lifting her glass into the air. Hannibal smiled at her, inclining his head before he took a careful sip. The red wine was rich against his lips, bloody and magnificent. Will set his glass back down.

“Why?” Bedelia asked, avoiding looking down at her leg, roasted and half-carved on the table, a masterpiece in the form of a meal. It had the mark of Hannibal Lecter all over it; it stunk of him. Bedelia watched another drop of wax drip down the candle between Hannibal and Will.

“Because Hannibal made a promise,” Will answered, and Bedelia was surprised to see him speak. He had been mostly quiet, content to watch as Hannibal brought her into their home and into a back room, layered with plastics. He stood in the corner while Hannibal pinned her down, moving only to place a mouth guard around her teeth and hold her shoulders to the ground while Hannibal slowly removed her leg. Will cleaned and dressed the wounds, hardly looking at her. Hannibal smiled. He needed no words.

“I did,” Hannibal agreed. “As did Will.”

“You didn’t have to come back,” Bedelia said. “We thought you were dead. I told you, it’s been over a year, and we thought you were dead-”

“You’ve been withdrawn,” Will pointed out, leaning forwards to lift a half of a pineapple out of the bowl by the candles. He sliced it carefully with his knife, careful with his fingertips, careful with the motions of his hands. His hands did not tremble, his breath did not shake. His slices were thin and perfect. “You’ve had little to no patients lately. I don’t know if anyone will miss you for some time, Bedelia. And, even then, will they know where you went?”

“No,” Hannibal answered him for her. “They likely will not.”

Bedelia ignored the throbbing in her leg stump, the open wound where her thigh should have been pulsing with her racing heart. Hannibal stood and began to carve the display at the center of the table. He served the first piece to Will, who placed pineapple slices along the rare nucleus of the meat. Hannibal served Bedelia next, meat and oysters all, ever the polite host, edging around the table on the side Will was seated on, if only to use it as an excuse to brush against him. Will paid him little mind, organizing the other half of his pineapple slices in preparation for Hannibal’s serving.

“You are first,” Hannibal continued. “Alana will be next, but not so soon as to raise suspicion.”

“We’re dead,” Will pointed out lightly. “We have all the time in the world.”

Hannibal smiled slightly, the corners of his lips tipping up as he served himself, meat and oysters decorated beautifully around his plate, more art than food. Will leaned across the dark wood of the table, the tips of his hair almost catching on candle flame, to delicately arrange Hannibal’s pineapple slices. Hannibal took his seat and allowed Will to his work. Bedelia watched them with the sharp eyes she has always had, framed in the only context she has had since they vanished.

“Why?” Bedelia asked again, softly. At Hannibal’s tilted chin, she lifted her knife. Her hands, gripping her knife and fork, hesitated over her own leg meat.

“Why not?” Hannibal asked back to her. Will’s portion was considerably smaller than Hannibal’s and Bedelia’s, there were no oysters, and he took slight, methodical bites, but he was eating, and he was watching them, eyes searing and fierce as he did so. “I said I would come for you, and I did.”

“What happened?” Bedelia cut a small piece of her meat. She swallowed roughly, throat bobbing, forcing herself to keep calm and not vomit onto the table. Hannibal was showing her mercy now, but she feared the slightest slip.

“The Red Dragon was nothing compared to us,” Hannibal said, prideful, and Bedelia felt the urge to call him on a deadly sin. “We eliminated him and fell together. It was Will who came up with the idea, letting fate take the decision out of our hands.” He looked at Will, and pride still glowed in his expression. Will’s lips tilted up, and he took another small bite. “Fate chose our lives, and our lives chose one another’s. ‘He is, most of all, l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.’”

“Dante,” Bedelia said, voice soft, nearing a whisper. She forced the tiny piece of meat into her mouth and swallowed it with a mouthful of wine to avoid chewing it.

“Correct,” Hannibal praised.

“‘The Devil is not as black as he is painted,’” Will added, and Hannibal inclined his head in Will’s direction. He took another bite of his meal. Will was cutting up his pineapple slices with his knife and fork. He was pairing them with small bites of the meat and lining them up.

“We know what we are meant to be,” Hannibal told her, “and we know what we are meant to do.”

“And what is that?” Bedelia asked; the atmosphere was thick, and growing thicker by second. She grasped at anything to say, anything to stall them, anything at all. Hannibal was nearly done with his meal. Will had finished his lines and was moving to complete the meal soon. She knew they would not wait for her to finish before whatever their next stop would logically be, for them. Will and Hannibal, however, just glanced at each other. Will placed his last bite in his mouth. Hannibal smiled.

“What we are,” Hannibal replied simply. He set his nearly-finished meal aside and stood. “Pardon me if I’m being rude, Bedelia, but I find myself craving dessert more than my supper right now.” He held a hand out. “Will?”

Will stood, his fingers dancing down Hannibal’s palm to his fingertips and away. Hannibal lurched around the table towards Bedelia, who threw her fork into Hannibal’s arm and her knife in Will’s direction. She tried to tip sideways out of her chair and drag herself, but she could find no purchase on the hardwood floor. Hannibal was on her in an instant, small holes bleeding sluggishly from the back of his hand where he had removed the fork she had plunged into him. He dragged her back by the waist and straddled her, bleeding hand around her throat.

“It’s been a pleasure,” Hannibal assured her. “And I will take the count for this one, rest assured. It _is_ my kill. Technically.”

Will smiled, Bedelia’s knife in his hand, high above her, seemingly miles past her head into the heavens. Hannibal’s hand was heavy on her, tight and unyielding, and she stopped fighting, her remaining limbs growing heavy. She blinked, and Will’s empty hand found the cloth over Hannibal’s shoulder. His fingertips dug in, nails creasing the smooth, neat, black of the suit jacket. She blinked again, and they were, at once, both closer and farther away.

“‘Thus you may understand that love alone is the true seed of every merit in you,’” Hannibal spoke to her, and the words were as if from God.

“‘And of all acts for which you must atone,’” Will finished, and the words were as if from cloaked Death himself, and Bedelia did not open her eyes again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The quotes are all from Dante, just like the line used to confess Hannibal's love earlier in the season. The Italian used in the one quote ("l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle") says: "the love that moves the sun and other stars".
> 
> Title taken from ["Love Crime" by Siouxsie Sioux and Brian Reitzell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5f8dMw_Zz4).
> 
> You can follow me on Twitter at [@nicoIodeon](https://twitter.com/nicoIodeon) or on Tumblr at [andillwriteyouatragedy](http://andillwriteyouatragedy.tumblr.com/).


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